Taste Of Summer

It was summer
when I first tasted a girl-

and I can't stop remembering
bare feet on asphalt, hot;
sweat popping above our lips

as we walked through empty lots,
past houses that watched behind
pulled blinds and barking dogs,
beyond the school where the next year
we would not know ourselves.

You look like a boy, she said
(her daddy wouldn't let her out with boys)
and the smile that tilted her face
tugged all my muscles at once

I can't forget a junked Dodge
half-buried in the woods off Cypress street,
its inside smelling of burnt oil and smoke

and how she felt like wet suede stretched
across the seat; whispers salt-glazed-

our mouths like wind on open wounds.